Devils night, p.8
Devil's Night, page 8
“Nah. I’ve seen some stuff go down, and not once was the bad guy a ghost.”
She’d never heard of anything like it, either. Not even in her father’s book. The physicality of those moments. The sheer terror of being so out of control, pushed and choked by someone unseen…That wasn’t supposed to happen in real life. She’d never encountered a ghost before who had such power.
Her dad’s book was all exaggeration—she’d been so sure. But whatever had happened in that room inside the Paradise Hotel, it wasn’t just the power of suggestion.
“Hey, I think it’ll work out,” Ray said. “Devil’s Fest is the most interesting thing to happen around here in a while. A lot of us are excited to go—me included.”
Penny tried to return his smile. From his worried look, she guessed she wasn’t too convincing.
It started to get dark, and another, less friendly, officer replaced Deputy Castillo. But Penny still hesitated to leave her post. Not until she had some good news to report back to Linden.
The door to the trailer slammed. Linden came out, heading over to the picnic area. Penny got up to meet her.
“Hey, the deputy said they could wrap up tomorrow,” Penny said. “I’m hoping that—”
But Linden cut her off. “You've been here all day. This isn’t where we need you.” That vein was twitching in Linden’s temple, the one that meant she was stressed. “I need you in Ashton with your uncle, pulling whatever strings you can. Not sitting here moping.”
“I’m not moping. I’m trying to learn what I can about their investigation.” She’d been working on her phone, too, wrestling with her lousy cell connection. “I know this delay is my fault, and I’m doing what I can to move us past it.”
Linden stepped in closer, taking her voice to a harsh whisper. “This isn’t just a delay. It’s a freaking dead body. Tripp is moving up his arrival, and you know he’s not happy about changing his plans. June’s flipping out, too. She’s been on the phone with SunBev since this morning, and they’re wondering if they should just pull the plug.”
There had to be a solution; Penny just couldn’t see it yet. “I’ll…I’ll go talk to June. Calm her down.” She started toward the trailer, but Linden touched her shoulder.
“No. You’re going back to Ashton, like I said. Matthew’s waiting to drive you.”
“Matthew? Why?”
“It was his idea. Go home. Talk to your uncle. And whatever your issues are with Matthew, figure them out. When I see you next, I want you focused completely on work.”
Linden turned on her heel and went back to the trailer.
In the parking lot, Matthew was waiting behind the wheel of his truck. She hadn’t noticed last night—it was the same 4x4 he’d had since high school. Memories tried to surface, but she wouldn’t let them come.
He leaned his head out of the window. “I’m starting to feel like your chauffeur.”
“I’ll call someone else.”
“Only kidding. I wanted to apologize for what I said yesterday—because I was out of line. I’m sorry. Linden told me you needed to go back to Ashton, so I’m here to help.”
The gesture should’ve been touching, but it felt like a punch to the chest. She was already so raw after what happened inside the hotel.
“Are you all right, Penn?”
“Sure. Just great.” She got in and slammed the passenger door.
The truck pulled onto the road. “How big of a problem is this?”
“I don’t know. We might get shut down.”
She’d only arrived yesterday. Now, her discovery had thrown the entire festival into chaos. If Penny didn’t do something, Tripp was going to fire her.
But what if the festival did go forward? What else could those ghosts be capable of?
Matthew chewed his lower lip. He had one hand on the steering wheel, the other resting on his jean-clad thigh.
She glanced at him. Whatever your issues are with him, figure them out, Linden had said.
How the heck was she supposed to do that?
“When they said you were trapped in the hotel, I couldn’t believe it,” Matthew said. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there.”
“Not your job to look after me.”
The truck shuddered as he drove over uneven road. “You want to talk about what happened?”
She told him what she’d said to the sheriff’s people—that she’d followed a ghost into that room and gotten stuck. A couple of uniformed officers had interviewed her, and they’d smirked as she told them about the apparition. One even laughed. Ghost stories were commonplace around Ashton, yet not everyone took them seriously.
Matthew listened without judgment. He’d known for years that she saw ghosts, so it was nothing new to him. She had no idea if he believed it, deep down. But at least he didn’t scoff.
Penny crossed her arms over her stomach, her body trembling again with chills.
“Hey. Tell me what you need. Dinner? A double martini?” Matthew reached out his hand, palm up.
“Why are you doing this?” Her voice was low and thick. Barely audible.
“Doing what? Giving you a ride?”
“Being so effing nice all of a sudden. Do you have any idea how much this hurts?”
He sighed, withdrawing his offered hand. “Penny…”
“No. Pull over, right now.”
“Why?”
Linden wants me to sort this out? Fine. Penny couldn’t do anything about that skeleton or the investigation, but she could clear the air with Matthew. So she could finally get over him and move on.
“We’re talking about this. Us.”
“You really think it’s the best time?” But he didn’t wait for her answer. He pulled the truck to the side of the road. They bumped and tilted on the angled shoulder. He swung wide so they’d be clear of any traffic and turned off the engine. He frowned at the steering wheel.
“I want to know what I did wrong,” she said. “Why you cut me out of your life.”
I want to know why you broke my heart.
Chapter Thirteen
She remembered the first time she saw Matthew. He was one of the boys that her older brother, Bryce, invited to play baseball in the meadow behind the inn. Matthew Larsen was the new kid, smaller and quieter than the others. Penny had been eleven, three years younger than Bryce, still tagging after him but old enough to know she wasn’t really wanted. But the rejection made her defiant. She insisted on watching them play and shouting her opinions, laughing at their mistakes. All that summer, she wore the same old pair of pink pants with tears at the knees. Her favorite Pokemon t-shirt, growing tighter as her body developed.
Matthew’s shaggy, dark-blond hair hung into his eyes. He kept his gaze down when he spoke, talking so quietly that the other boys had to lean in. He was the shortest of the group of fourteen-year-olds, the same height as eleven-year-old Penny. But he had an easygoing confidence about him, some impervious quality that almost always made the teasing slide off without hitting a mark.
Penny remembered his skinny legs beneath his jean shorts, his knobby knees. He stepped up to home plate holding the bat. Swing and a miss. He struck out every time at bat that first game. Penny pulled the band from her hair and held it out, shouting that he needed to keep his bangs out of his eyes. Some of the other kids laughed; Bryce told her to shut up. But Matthew had smiled, tossing his head so his hair moved to the side, and she’d felt a flutter in her stomach. She didn’t understand the feeling, that thrill, but she liked it.
She liked Matthew. He never called her “ghost girl” or pretended to see spirits to mock her. Bryce had been a decent older brother—he never let his friends tease her within his hearing. But with Bryce, there was one right way to do things, and it drove him nuts if you did anything else. Sometimes he let her play ball, but he always yelled that she was holding the bat wrong, even though she got base hits as often as any of them.
Matthew never yelled at anybody. Even if he was on the other team, he’d give her a fist bump as she rounded the bases.
When Penny was fourteen and Bryce was seventeen, she’d decided that her brother should teach her how to drive their dad’s old truck. She had all her arguments ready to convince Bryce, the consummate rule follower, that she didn’t need to wait for her learner’s permit. “What if you’re off at college, and Mom and Dad are both sick, and I have to drive Krista to the hospital?” He’d made a lot of faces, but Bryce loved bestowing his sage advice even more than he loved shutting her down, so he’d agreed.
Matthew rode along. He and Bryce were best friends by then, and Matthew had grown taller and broader. Cute enough that girls covered their mouths and whispered when he walked past. He sat in the middle of the back seat, quiet as Bryce lectured about ten-and-two-o’clock on the steering wheel. But every time she looked into the rearview mirror, Matthew was watching her, a reassuringly calm smile on his face. She felt comfortable around him. Like the bubble of confidence that surrounded him could extend out to encompass you, too, if you’d let it.
When they got to a deserted stretch of country road, she and Bryce switched seats. “Just take it nice and easy,” Bryce said. “Don’t kill us.”
“You’re making her nervous,” Matthew had said.
“I’m not,” Penny insisted, though she was starting to sweat.
The whole thing was a disaster, as Penny should’ve expected. She pushed the pedals too hard, making the car lurch forward and back. She jerked the wheel and ran the car off into the grass when she tried to turn. And all the while, Bryce kept thundering at her, “No, you’re doing it wrong!”
Then a man dashed into the road.
She’d screamed and punched the brakes, which promptly locked up. They’d skidded to a stop, the smell of scorched rubber rising from the truck’s tires. She started crying as she tried to explain; the man stumbling across the asphalt, blood running down the side of his face. She realized as she spoke that it hadn’t been a living man, only the ghost of one. She’d nearly crashed because she was scared.
Usually, ghosts didn’t appear as they did in the moment of death. They were projections, made of pure consciousness, of a particular moment in the ghost’s life. She’d gathered that much. But this one, with the blood and the shock on his face, had caught her off guard.
Neither her brother nor Matthew had seen the ghost. Usually, Bryce was unfazed by her sightings. But at that moment, her story just infuriated her brother even more.
Bryce got out of the car. “I knew this was a terrible idea. There’s no way you can drive.”
She went back to shotgun, and they yelled at one another on the ride home. When they got back to the inn, Bryce slammed the driver’s side door and stomped inside.
Penny didn’t move to get out. Instead, she smacked her fist against the dashboard.
There came a creak from the seat behind her. She’d entirely forgotten Matthew was back there.
“Sorry I suck at driving,” she said.
“Everybody does at first.” He got out, then appeared at the front passenger door. “We can go around the block if you want to try again.” He gestured for her to scoot over into the driver’s seat.
“Are you serious? What if I see another ghost? I’ll probably drive into the side of the inn.”
“I don’t think so. But if you see something, go easier on the brake.”
He was so calm about it. So Penny shrugged and shimmied herself over to the driver’s side. Matthew took her place at shotgun. He talked her through each step, nice and slow, in that deep, breathy voice of his.
“Have you tried using just your toes to press the accelerator?”
“I was going to do that next,” she said. “Bryce didn’t give me a chance.”
They made it out of the parking lot, then down the road at a snail’s pace. An SUV honked at her, then zoomed around. She kept glancing over at Matthew. He smelled like the autumn floral arrangement that her mom had placed in the dining room, pine cones and evergreen branches and sticks of cinnamon. He just sat in his seat, humming whatever was on the radio, even when she made the brakes squeal. Occasionally, he gave her suggestions.
By the end of the drive, she was half in love with him. Afterward, he just gave her the usual fist bump and went to find Bryce.
Over the next few years, she fell in and out of love with Matthew countless times. But everything with Penny was like that—a new hobby would take over her entire world, only to burn out after a few weeks. Her mother and Bryce would scold her for being fickle and unfocused, but she was just trying to find that perfect pursuit that would never let her down, never get old. She was trying to figure out who she was supposed to be.
The decision to go to UCLA for college was like falling in love, in a way—just a possibility at first, and then suddenly overtaking her entire being. Los Angeles was one among several campus visits. She’d never been to California, and she figured she’d get a beach trip out of it. And then she walked UCLA’s straight, wide paths with those thousands of anonymous students. She lay in the green grass beneath a perfect blue sky, her lungs so full of the rich sea-level air—she could almost smell the ocean even there, miles inland—and she just knew it in her heart. This was where she belonged.
That day, she didn’t see a single ghost.
Matthew was one of the first people she told. He’d rounded the bend into his twenties by then, a surrogate big brother who listened, who asked just the right questions. Probably her closest friend. He never seemed to notice her recurring infatuations with him.
She texted him a selfie on Ocean Drive in Santa Monica, a bougainvillea plant in full pink bloom behind her, and wrote, Who knew I was really a California girl? He texted back a picture of a surfer. Part of her had been wondering if he’d be sad. But she’d given up hoping that someday Matthew would long for her the way she longed for him.
At the end of the summer after her high school graduation, she got ready to leave. Her high school friends wanted to take her out for one last wild night.
After a day or two of debate—do I dare?—she picked Eden.
She hadn’t been back there since childhood. Since the infamous Devil’s Night that formed the basis of her father’s book. Her parents had actively forbidden her, and for many years, she’d listened. But the Old West town represented everything she was leaving behind—her family history, the small town environment where everybody knew her quirks.
It was August, and that year’s Devil’s Night had already passed. Which was fine. She wasn’t ready for that level of rebellion. Penny just wanted to watch the sun sink behind the canyon walls and maybe hear Eden’s ghosts whispering and know she was almost free. Her friends would be right alongside her, and she wouldn’t stay the night. Matthew would be there, safe and steady as always.
When she saw Matthew that night, she knew something about him had changed.
Her brother Bryce was taking summer classes at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He was about to start his senior year as a business major. But Matthew hadn’t gone away to school. Instead, he was taking night courses at a local community college and working construction during the day. All that summer—after her high school graduation—there’d been a weird tension between him and Penny that she couldn’t put her finger on. There was more weight to his silences. More meaning to his looks. But she dismissed it. If he really felt something for her, then she was sure she’d know.
But she remembered how he looked at her that night. That last night. They were in the parking lot of the inn, her friends sneaking sips of cheap whiskey from a flask. She had invited Matthew to her going-away celebration, though he didn’t really know her other friends well. But Matthew never seemed awkward with new people. At least, not until that night.
Matthew had shown up right at eleven. He stood apart from the group, his hands in his pockets and his lips pressed together.
Penny sidled over to him. “What is it?” she asked. “Something on your mind, Larsen?” She tapped his forehead. He caught her hand.
“You sure this is a good idea, Penn? You going to Eden? Your brother would flay me if he knew I came along.”
“Then make sure Bryce doesn’t hear about what happens tonight. It’s our secret.” She was flirting with him a little. She felt wild, like a bird ready to open its wings and fly. Two shots of whiskey, and her nerves were singing.
“Just promise me it’s what you want,” he said, voice lowered. “I need to know they didn’t pressure you into this.”
She leaned in closer, her mouth an inch from his, and whispered, “I want this.” She just wanted to see his reaction. And react, he did. His nostrils flared. Matthew’s eyes flashed in the dark, like two sparks alighting from a campfire.
“Let’s load up,” somebody said. They were all supposed to ride up to Eden together, cramming into her friend Jimmy’s Dodge Quad Cab. Penny grabbed Matthew’s arm and they walked to the truck, where the others were already climbing in. There were eight of them and only six seats, so a few would have to double up.
Matthew leaned in to say, “Sit with me?”
“Okay,” she said, her throat constricting.
Matthew got in first and went to the back. She tried squeezing in beside him, but he pulled her onto his knees. The engine started. The cab was dark, and Luke Bryan played on the radio. The others were talking and giggling, pushing at each other, not paying attention to her or Matthew.
She sat against him, sliding fully into his lap. His chest rose and fell against her back. His hands held her by the hips, gripping tighter when the truck bumped or turned.
She couldn’t breathe. She thought maybe her heart had stopped.
“Is this okay?” Matthew murmured.
She turned her body to the side, so she could see him. His eyes were bright, his mouth slightly open. “Yes,” she whispered back. They went over a bump, making her rock against him.
He put his mouth against her ear. “Tell me again what you want?” he asked, so low that she felt the words more than hearing them.
